Last week's Afghan elections were contested under the shelter of an American-led army which had invaded the country in 2001 promising to liberate its women as well as free its men from tyranny. Yet the moderate, western-backed party wants a law which will allow husbands to refuse food to wives who are sexually unsatisfactory. Is the idea of extending western rights to poor Muslim women merely imperial hubris?

On a much smaller and less dramatic scale, the struggles over veiling, burqas, and even segregated weddings in this country raise the same kind of question. When community customs come up against individual human rights, which will prevail? Can liberals grant women the right to choose to be oppressed? Or can there be some compromise worked out, which would modify both modern and traditional ideas of what it is to be human, and so what rights we all deserve?

Tuesday's response

Asma Barlas: The US invasion of Afghanistan had nothing to do with its women – change in Islamic nations must come from within

Wednesday's response

Nesrine Malik: Western feminists should not assume everyone's struggle mirrors their own – their obsession with the burqa has a patronising whiff

Friday's response

Geraldine Brooks: I'm proud to be a western feminist – but we're not the only ones exquisitely sensible of gender injustice